Eyes That Have Never Seen
by hungrytiger11
Summary: Some people will do anything to be able to see everything. A little girl's introduction to the world. Hyuuga-centric
1. Eyes That Have Never Seen

Her fingers breaking were what woke her. Later, she would wonder, did she hear them snap or only feel the blooming pain? She screams, but there is something pushing against her tongue, cloth choking against her tonsils and down her throat. Unexpected warmth rushes around her temples in pounding coils, and the world is suddenly, and sickeningly, in fuller view than it was before. It makes her ill, but the bile has no where to go and she is gagging and coughing when hands wrap around her, and suddenly, they are moving over roofs.

Her body slams against someone else's, first into her captor then his friend, in this frantic scramble over buildings. Ahead of them are city walls. Behind them, Hinata sees the Hyuuga compound lights flicker on, people's shadows flooding through the doors. Her captors take no notice. Are they scared? Hinata cannot tell; they have holes in their eyes that make them hard to read. Their eyes, more than anything else, scare her, and she wants her father. She wants anyone, so long as they would take her away from these men. She kicks and kicks against these hands that dig in tighter, tight enough to draw blood.

The world blurs, going too fast for these new eyes to take in, and then, somehow, like she wanted, there is her father on top of the wall, running to meet them. Bodies crash into one another as they fight, nothing like the dances her father and uncle show in training. Arms and legs dive around each other, the sheer drop to the country on one side, the city on the other. In a move, she is thrown. There are stars above her and the ground below. Wind is screaming past her ears as she plummets and someone else is screaming too, but it still is not her. Above, her father's movements never slow or falter in his fight.

The impact jars her new vision from her eyes. She hits first flesh then the ground and arms are wrapping tight around. She struggles against them till she hears her name. Above her are white eyes, reassuring in their normalness. The face is a little like her father's but more worn. Her uncle pulls the cloth from her mouth and runs a hand across her face.

" Are you unharmed?" he asks. Before she can answer, veins bloom in a lattice across his temples and a dull thud sounds from behind. His limbs at awkward angles, her captor lays spread-eagle across the ground. Blood dribbles out his mouth, and his eyes with holes in them are staring up into nothing. A moment later, her father lands beside them.

His are the first arms she does not struggle against tonight, and he just holds her for several minutes. She can hear his ragged breathing against her neck; feel his heartbeat with her head against his chest.

"Hiashi-sama," Her uncle is at their side, whispering furiously, "We must alert the Hokage, and Hinata-sama's hands have been damaged. A medic-nin needs to look at them. Come. We cannot stay here."

Her father does not answer, but he moves, so it is the same result. In a gesture mimicking her uncle's, her father brushes his hands across her face. Along her jaw line, over her cheeks, across her lips and carefully tracing all around her eyes, his fingers travel.

" You activated your Byakugan, and so young too. Perhaps there will be hope yet. I am proud of you this night, my daughter." Her hands are pulsing, and she smells of sick, but she almost manages not move under his gaze. Turning, neither man waits for her to follow them home. Their Byakugan will see that she does.


	2. The Sun Across Your Face

Eyes That Have Never Seen: The Sun Across Your Face

Neji opens his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling. A moment of fear flutters through him, till he recognizes where he is. Hinata-chan's room. No, Hinata-sama's room, he corrects himself. His father is always telling him, _Sama, Sama, Sama_. Shifting his body around, he finds the little _Sama_ herself, wrapped up in a ball, cheek rubbing against his blanket. Her own blanket, he can see, she has once again thrown off.

Turning back to the ceiling, Neji sighs. Four months he's been sleeping here, in this room, and every morning still, he cannot remember immediately where he is. For four months he has woken up and hated being here. He tells his father some days he thinks he'll forget the way to his own room. His father laughs and Neji laughs too, but in reality, he wonders. How long will this continue?

He rubs at the year-old mark wrapped under bandages on his head. The real reason he doesn't want to be here is his uncle, who has the power to hurt him. He often dreams of his father's twitching body on the training floor, and of his words moments before he collapsed. _Watch and you will learn something_. When he wakes, sometimes his father is there in the room, sleeping with his back braced against the wall. Other mornings there is no one but his cousin and himself in the room, and Neji has begun to suspect on those nights his father does not sleep at all.

Neji doesn't sleep much either when he's here. Voices wake him in the night. They always sound like arguing. Doors are slammed at all hours and sometimes his aunt opens the doors to her daughter's room, just to stand there, over them, and watch them as they sleep. All night, he feels like he is standing guard.

Still, it is not like he cannot come. He learned two things that day his uncle activated the seal. One: to fear the main house. Two: it was his duty to protect his cousin. That first night, when Hinata-chan told him she was afraid men without eyes would come to take her away, he thought she was making it up. Or, if she really was afraid, it was like their little cousin Eji-kun, who thought a monster lived under the egawa. He told her not to be stupid; no one was going to take her away. Neither slept much that night for different reasons, and Neji felt awful, when he recounted the tale to his father. He said men really had hurt her and stolen her. Hearing that was like failing before he'd ever begun, but he couldn't explain to his father why. He's failed, but continues come. And he never thinks to question that.

Hinata-chan running up to hug him from behind is like tiny bursts of sunlight breaking through leaves. Her laugh was always unexpected, and her first, morning, smile was like waking up feeling warm sunlight across his face. _Hinata_ was a good name for his cousin, so every morning he would wake up, and remember where he was. If his father was there, he would move to sit beside him, and together they would wait for Hinata-chan's first smile. If they were alone, he would give her a little of his blanket and lay back in bed, feeling the sun across his face.


	3. Monsoons

Eyes That Have Never Seen: Monsoon

It was raining last night, and it had rained all the day before. Mama says it is only monsoons, nothing more. It is raining when they take her uncle's body out from behind clan walls and give it to more strange-eyed men. She had listened to the rain hitting the egawa floors when an Elder spoke to her that morning who told her she was not to say anything when these men came. She listened to the rain instead; today her uncle was dead. Today, her uncle was dead, and, somehow, in some way, this was her fault.

This was her fault because her father had said so. Not to her, never to her. Like all daddies, he protected her from the things that wanted to hurt her, and if this was a different kind of hurt than the strange-eyed men had given her the night they stole her, it was a worse one. Mama had said her uncle was not coming back. Daddy had cried sometime in the night; there were streaks on his face. She did not know if he had cried since. He'd locked himself in his study and now they had a body they needed to give away. She knows its her fault because, when her mother opens the study doors to tell him they are leaving, he says, " If only I'd gotten to Hinata quicker, before they reached the walls."

Her mind flashes an image of a man, back arching, falling from the sky, smacking the ground with a sickening noise, but what she latches onto is the truth. Somehow, in some way, what is happening now is her fault.

The rain is chill on their faces as they step out from the main gates. Only Mama and she go out to deliver the body of her uncle. Rain trickles down his still face. Standing out vividly against his pale skin is some sort of mark. She has never seen it before. The way these men taking the body stare at it, she wonders if they have ever seen a mark like that before either. It looks familiar, if only she could remember from where.

She wonders where her aunt is, if she is crying too. She wonders where Neji-niisan is. His father is leaving. He should say good-bye. She wonders why her father is not here. Doesn't he miss his brother? She misses her uncle already. She misses him even though he is here.

The rain is loud against the roof tiles, stinging hands against hollowed-out drums. These men and her mother talk overhead, and her mother's voice seems agitated. Hinata doesn't need the words. She focuses on the voice instead and wills it to sound somehow comforting. All she can hear is the rain and the hurt. Men load the body onto a cart and hastily pull a tarp over it. They are never given a moment to say good-bye, she thinks, but then remembers she wouldn't have been able to say anything anyway. She is not to talk in front of these men.

These men turn their backs and start to walk away, without any last words to the woman and child standing there.

Watching till the cart is out of sight would be painful. Turning back before the final moment would be painful too. She pulls at rain-slicked fingers in indecision and sees, from the corner of her eye, barely discernable shadows at the main gates. A woman and a boy are watching with Byagukan eyes at the scene unfolding. For them, watching and not watching can be the same. She presses against the charka-less veins around her eyes but nothing comes and nothing changes. When she turns her eyes up again, the men and her uncle's corpse, are already gone, tracks muddy from the rain. Looking back at the gates, the shadows are not there anymore. And she wonders, if her father is watching with his Byakugan eyes as well, if he can still see his brother's journey, if he can see where those shadows went.

She thinks if he is watching, the Byakugan will see this moment of complete regret. She's never heard the word before today, but it must be what she is feeling now. She heard it in her mother's final reply, before they left to give her uncle away. " It does no good to regret."

It was raining last night and it was raining the day before. The day before her uncle was not dead and no men were coming to take him away. Regret, Hinata guesses, is wanting things to stay the same. Light breaches across her face as the sun breaks out from behind clouds for the first time in days. Like all things, the monsoons do not stay.


End file.
